The Commitment

The Productive Leader is all about instilling a culture of improvement at all levels of the organisation.

The programme is designed to enable teams to reduce waste and variation in personal work processes and focus their efforts on value adding activities that make a difference to their organisation. By adopting evidence-based best meetings practice and more effective email management, we calculate that a chief executive or director could release around 20 per cent of their time for other activities.

But this is not a quick fix. You and your team need to commit time and effort if these benefits are to be realised.

Your investment

The role of the executive sponsor is to commit time and effort to the programme by driving engagement at every level - which could take up to 16 hours in total - up to 20 if the sponsor is participating in the programme

As a leader or admin staff participant in The Productive Leader, you will need to invest around 20 hours over the period of the programme implementation. This includes the pre-work, the self-development modules and attending the facilitated sessions.

Project managers and facilitators could spend up to 15 hours per week in the early stages of the programme. We recommend that the people you select to plan and faciliate the programme have both the capability and capacity - please contact us to discuss this further. (see the FAQ and the Executive Leader Guide for more details of these roles).

The Productive Leader is all about making the most out of precious leadership and management resources.

How will I know whether this is the right time for The Productive Leader?

Discuss the criteria for success with your Executive Sponsor:

Is the exec team on board?

Agree the approach for the first cohort - if you plan to start with the leadership team, will they model the new practices and behaviours, building credibility for other staff?

How will be programme be adapted to your organisational context and culture?

Have you identified a project manager and facilitator who have the skills and capacity to deliver the programme (for full details see the Executive Leader Guide pages 22-24)

Think about the timing - does it align with current priorities within the organisation?

Manage your participants' expectations

Commit to data collection to measure improvement

Share the success - get others involved outside of the participant team ie comms, HR

Think about your spread and sustainability plan from the start - how are you going to spread best practice throughout your organisation?

If you are interested in The Productive Leader but are not part of NHS England, please contact us.